


The Five Stages of Grief

by Chromi



Category: One Piece
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Acceptance, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Universe, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Moving On, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-07-17 21:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19963549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromi/pseuds/Chromi
Summary: (DISCONTINUED)When one loses a loved one, they enter into what is known as the five stages of grief or loss. The pain takes time to process, presenting itself in a roller coaster of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Never getting over it, never truly forgetting, but learning to live with it.Marco has a rough ride ahead of him, learning to come to terms with the loss of his closest brothers and his beloved father after the Paramount War.





	1. Stage One - Denial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is discontinued due to lack of reader interest. Sorry to the handful of people who were subscribed to it.

_Days since the funeral: 3_

The cold sea breeze ruffled Marco’s blond hair, catching at it and caressing through the strands like the fine fingers of a lover. It pulled at his cigarette smoke from between his fingers, whisking it away, never to be seen again. His cobalt blue eyes followed the ash that fell from the end, flicking it off his knee when it landed.

Pops would have been furious to see that his first mate had taken up smoking again. He had tried so hard and for so long to get Marco to break the habit, had pulled out all the stops with patches, gum, meditation… you name it, Pops insisted he trial it. Marco’s reasoning that it didn’t matter, that he could heal any damage he did to himself, always fell on deaf ears. “Don’t be so damn selfish, son,” Pops would say, “what about your brothers taking in second-hand smoke? Hm?”

This had always made Marco laugh. The majority of the crew smoked; what difference did his addition make? Whether it be socially during a game of poker or habitually chaining 40 a day, there were very few among them who didn’t touch the stuff.

But that was Pops to a T. Caring to a fault and always seeing the absolute best in the people he loved most.

Not that that mattered anymore. Nothing mattered anymore, come to think about it. Pops would never give him the lecture on preserving his own health despite his powers ever again.

It still didn’t feel real. Marco had witnessed it, had never screamed so hard in his life as he had when his captain fell in battle. It had happened in slow motion to him, his senses hyper aware as the fight had left his father’s stance. He could remember, as if recounting the memories of a different person, being unable to breathe in that moment. How it had felt like his heart had gone cold and his hands had gone numb. His vision had receded to black around the periphery just like when he had seen Thatch dead on the floor many months ago.

Marco blinked rapidly, expelling that hellish image from his mind. No, that was not to be thought about. Under no circumstances was that to be recalled. He would not process that until Blackbeard was dealt with, he had decided.

Thatch’s death had been all too real, the whole ordeal a sickening concoction of adrenaline and nausea.

But Pops and Ace… Their deaths were entirely different. Marco had been there, had been foolish enough to let himself be rendered useless right as Ace needed him. Ace’s life had depended on him and he had failed. He had got there too late, barely in time to protect Luffy, been so close to Ace that he felt the toe of his boot to the back of his sandal as Akainu had pushed him backwards.

Too late.

Too late.

 _Too late_.

He flicked the stub of his cigarette over the figurehead of the ship he resided on now. Not the Moby Dick; that had sunk. One of the two remaining ships of the fleet, the one that was home to the thirteenth through to sixteenth divisions and their commanders, and now also home to half of the crew who had effectively become homeless.

Marco did not enjoy sleeping in one of the shared rooms of the sixteenth division. The bed didn’t warm around him, icy in the loss of it’s true occupant. A dead man’s coffin that he was expected to reside in, the owner never returning from the afterlife. Marco took to sleeping on the figurehead or in the crow’s nest after his first and only attempt below deck.

All of his worldly possessions had sunk with the flagship. Marco didn’t care for those. But so had everything that Ace had left behind; everything that he had touched, the sheets that had still smelled of him after so long, that yellow shirt he had favored in the beginning and had thought to have gone missing… Marco never told him he had taken it for himself.

And all of Pops’ things had gone down in flames, too. All the little trinkets he had collected over the years that were nothing but garbage to the uneducated eye - a bowl hand-carved from a coconut that had been a gift from the locals of one of their protected territories; a necklace of seashells that the children of another had made for him; an old, tattered photograph of himself with his flowing golden mane of hair, arm in arm with Roger… the photo that Marco had taken the last time they ever saw the Pirate King.

Marco felt numb as he watched the waves, once again feeling no pull to seek out the company of any of his brothers. He didn’t feel much of anything, truth be told, and hadn’t since he had stood in front of their graves.

Time didn’t matter anymore.

Eating became a chore he didn’t wish to partake in.

Sleep came far too easily, rolling over him in waves of hours at a time multiple times a day, a blessed break from the gray void of existing without a purpose. He would always wake in a panic, though, cold sweat chilling him with the sounds of magma splintering bone, melting organs, dissolving blood echoing in his ears.

Those were the only times he properly felt anything beyond the white noise of denial.

Marco looked up as a hand trailed along his left shoulder. Izou sat down beside him, close enough for their arms to touch, the contact awakening the faintest flicker of _something_ inside the blond. Of gratitude, he would have recognised if he had had the emotional capacity to do so in that moment.

“We missed you at dinner,” Izou said quietly, looking out over the waves. “I brought you something in case you were hungry.”

Izou placed a sandwich on top of a napkin on Marco’s knee. Marco picked it up automatically, lacking all desire to eat it but recognising that to not do so would only hurt Izou. He bit into it without tasting it, having no idea what was inside.

They sat in silence for a long moment - a minute, an hour, a day, Marco could barely tell anymore. It all felt the same, regardless.

Izou shifted slightly, reaching up and removing the ornate clip from his hair. It fell in a long cascade of jet black, hanging down his back before being caught by the breeze that played with Marco’s own. Izou ran his fingers through his hair slowly, as if gearing himself up for something. Marco couldn’t find it in his heart to care what it was about.

“We need to talk,” Izou said at last as Marco finished his poor excuse for a meal. The napkin was carried away by the breeze, neither men making any attempt to stop it.

Marco grunted. “Do we?” his voice leaving him in a rasp after three days of near total neglect.

“Yes,” Izou replied. He laid a hand to Marco’s knee, leaning against him a little more, perhaps longing for the comfort that Marco would not be able to provide. “We need a plan, a direction to head in. We can’t keep drifting like this, Marco. Someone is bound to find us soon, and the men need leading.”

Marco scoffed. What was Izou coming to him for? That was Pops’ job, not his.

But no, it _was_ his job, he understood as his mind caught up with his knee-jerk reaction. He was captain now, not Pops. He didn’t want the job, could never even think of living up to the role that Pops had filled. He was not these men’s father, he was an orphaned child just like the rest of them.

Simply one boy leading the others along a path he could not see.

“I can’t lead anyone,” he admitted, weakness laid bare. Pride was worthless now. Look where it had gotten Ace. Look how easily it had clipped his own wings and left him unable to fly.

“Yes, you can,” Izou said gently, “you are precisely what the crew needs. There’s no one better for the job than you.”

Yes, there was. Why didn’t Izou understand? It was for Pops to lead them, not him, never him. Marco could not see past the end of that day, never mind trying to fathom the darkness of the rest of their lives.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” Marco said dully, not caring how he came across. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this was not like him, that he would never normally be one to discourage his brothers and would have in fact been in Izou’s position under any other circumstance. “I don’t have a plan, I don’t know what we should do, and I am not this crews’ captain. Pops is.”

Izou wrapped an arm around Marco’s waist, pulling him a little closer as he laid his cheek to his shoulder. They watched a solitary seagull swoop by, crying for it’s fellows to join it. None came.

“Pops will always be our father,” Izou said, “no one would ever take that title from him. But it’s your turn to become our captain. You know it was in Pops’ will; you countersigned it, after all.”

He remembered - Pops had sat him down one day, told him he was writing his will and last wishes. How flippant Marco had been, laughing at Pops for being so concerned with the crew’s wellbeing after his own demise. He had arrogantly, idiotically, told Pops that he was worrying about nothing, that such a time wouldn’t come, that he’d never succumb to anything.

Textbook denial. Marco’s gaze had lingered on the oxygen being fed into Pops’ nose as he had convinced himself that his father would somehow, _somehow_ , stay with them for all of time, knowing it was not physically possible. Yet still he had countersigned the document as it’s witness.

“I didn’t think it would happen,” Marco confessed, and suddenly his throat felt constricted. “I didn’t actually think that he could ever _lose_. It wasn’t supposed to be possible.”

He heard Izou sigh, low and tremulous. He should probably hug his commander back, he supposed, or at the very least comfort him in some way. Marco knew in some far off distant part of his awareness that he was not the only one hurting, that his family were suffering the same shock and pain as he was, but that realisation felt foreign to him. He cared dimly, faintly, knowing it was there but not connecting to it.

“No one thought he could,” Izou’s voice trembled as he spoke and he nestled deeper into Marco’s shoulder, as if willing his brother to make things better, “and when Ace was freed from his cuffs we all thought we were assured victory. But…”

Marco finally acted, moving on instinct more than making a conscious effort as he wrapped his arm around Izou in return and pulled him into his chest. Izou’s breath hitched as the tears started, fuelled by their admittance that they were facing an impossible outcome, that they had not planned for or even entertained the notion that Pops would not succeed this time.

He would never see Pops again. He would never scold him for drinking when the nurses had told him to leave the sake alone, would never again pay for all of his drinks in taverns and play along with Pops’ lies that he had left his wallet on board. There was no coming back from this, the loneliness and loss and ache for the people who Marco knew to be gone but whose presence he could still feel.

He had still expected to hear Thatch’s whistled tunes whenever he had headed down to the kitchens of the Moby Dick, even right up to the day before the war, feet carrying him there out of habit before realising that what he sought would not be waiting for him.

Even now, after months of separation and after watching him die in Luffy’s arms, he swore he could sometimes hear Ace laughing, or catch sight of the crackle of his fire, or feel his gaze on the back of his neck. As if on cue, Marco glanced down at Izou against him and was momentarily tricked by the black hair under his chin. _Ace_. He ran his fingers through the locks and was snapped instantly from his illusion; the consistency was all wrong, the length too long, too shiny, not rough enough to be _his_. Izou’s shoulders in his arm were too narrow and less muscular than Ace’s had been, failing to fool Marco.

It _hurt_.

Pain flooded Marco’s system, suffocating him, making him feel sick after days of being almost entirely numb to life. He gripped Izou tighter, hugging him in earnest with both arms now and letting the tears fall unhindered. He allowed it to build, let the misery and the loss and the finality of it all take him, sobbing wet and loud into the curve of Izou’s neck when he sat up and looped his arms around Marco’s shoulders.

 _It hurt_.

The pain was free now, free to smother him under its all-consuming weight and deaden everything else. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it, and he thought his heart might break under the strain of it.

They were not coming back.

They would never speak to him again, never touch him, never hold him, never tease him.

Gone.

Lost.

It was too much to take. Too much to remember.

The commander and his captain held each other for a long time, Izou rocking Marco gently through the waves of the pain and anguish, giving him the outlet he so very much needed. This was never going to be easy but they had to go through it, had to get past the first stage to somehow work through the rest to then pull through to the other side and to heal.

Fuck, it _hurt._

Marco had no idea how they were supposed to pull back from this, had no idea what would become of them or their territories now. What would become of him, held aloft to fill the boots of the man that he had already considered to be King.

But whatever he had to do, he didn’t have to do it alone.

The comforting grasp of a hand to his shoulder pulled Marco’s blurred vision from Izou, sickened by his futile hope that that hand belonged to one of the dearly departed, irrationally saddened to see Vista’s kind face looking back at him. Vista, who had fought alongside Marco in protecting Luffy mere seconds after Ace’s fatal blow. Marco was choked with affection for his brother as he held his gaze through the tears for a long moment, words not coming to him despite wanting to thank him, again, for being there. The large man sat on Marco’s right and silently wrapped his arms around the crying pair, holding them close without uttering a word. He didn’t need to.

Another touch to his back, and then Haruta was in front of him, squatting down to crawl into Marco’s lap between Vista and Izou and cuddle into them.

Rakuyo. Namur. Jozu. All of the commanders, one by one, patted their new captain and settled against each other, holding whoever they could reach, none of them dry-eyed as Marco _howled_ his pain into Vista’s arm, their solidarity too much for him. After days of feeling precisely nothing, this sudden mess of unbridled sorrow and love for his brothers was too much, way too much.

But they had his back. They would always, no matter what the future brought them, have their captain’s back. They were a family, bonded together by years of dedication, and the loss of their father would not change that, not while they still carried his mark on their skin, not while they remembered him and loved him throughout the rest of their lives.


	2. Stage Two - Anger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes the briefest of mentions of suicidal ideation. 
> 
> This was hard to write, but I maintain that it's important to acknowledge that Marco would have suffered enormously after the war. Losing three people you love would be enough to destroy anyone, yet he kept going despite it all.
> 
> I love him so much.

_Days since the funeral: 20_

It had been something so small, so wildly trivial that had set him off this time.

Vista, in their bid to make room for the increased number of bodies on board the remaining ships, had been cleaning out a store room with the help of a few men from his division who had survived the war, and in it they had discovered something that had once belonged to Ace. A bright red bracelet that a child from one of their protected territories had woven for him when they had last visited, the little girl having taken an immediate shine to the young commander.

How the thing had ended up on one of the ships that he hadn’t resided on, or how it had found it’s way into a store room that was largely neglected, no one could fathom a guess. But it was there, and one of the men had been stupid enough - or kind enough, depending on who you asked - to press it into Marco’s palm when he had landed back on deck after scouting a wide perimeter around the ships.

And Marco had lost his shit.

The other commanders gave Marco a wide berth as he worked himself up into yet another rage, his constant cycle of swinging between destructive fury and numb misery almost as exhausting for them as it was for him.

It was all Ace’s fault. This entire situation, the war, his own demise, and Pops’ death.

All Ace.

The fucking idiot.

That moronic, short-sighted, arrogant little fuck.

Marco kicked at a chair as he stormed into the ship’s mess hall, blind to where his feet were leading him and not caring who saw him. They had all seen it enough by now to not be alarmed anymore.

He had thought about it in enormous detail during those hours where he had initially kept himself away from the others up in the crow’s nest, refusing to eat unless made to and spending his time chasing thoughts around his head.

Everything could be traced back to Ace’s actions, the impulses of one twenty-year-old man. All of it. Right back to the start.

The others blamed Teach, of course, _of course_ , because why _would_ they blame fucking Perfect Boy Ace? Marco sure hadn’t, following their mantra of loathing Teach during those months that Ace had fucked off looking for him.

The catalyst, the very beginning of it all, was Ace failing to notice anything was amiss with Teach on that night Thatch brought back the Yami-Yami fruit. The others had not shared Marco’s sentiment, to say the absolute least, when he had brought it up a week or so ago, had told him he was being too harsh on the memory of his lover by blaming him for that.

But, as Ace had said himself at the time, it was _his_ job to pick up on changes in behaviour in his division. It had been down to _him_ to recognise that Teach was planning something. The others may well defend him, and Marco himself had done so too, but he could see it now that he was thinking clearly.

And he _was_ thinking clearly, no longer blinkered by his feelings for Ace or by the hurt that threatened to break free and carry his feet to the side of the ship and let himself drown. It didn’t matter what the other commanders said; he could see the truth now.

Marco paced the dark hall, fury pounding through his veins, raising his fist to shove it through his hair but finding that bracelet still clasped tight in his palm. He threw it, watched it sail through the air and land on a table, and he wished in that instant that his fire could burn. He wanted it gone, wanted any reminders of Ace to die with him and leave him well alone.

What had come next? Ah yes, Ace’s next stage of Dumbassery and Bravado. His insistence that he follow Teach, deserting them, ignoring Pops’ warnings, promising Marco that he would come back to him only to never set foot on the Moby Dick again.

Marco snarled at the memory. If the boy had just stopped and _thought_ for a single goddamn minute, if he had just calmed down and spoken to Pops properly, then this wouldn’t have happened. They would have avoided the entire war.

Fuck it, while they were on the subject, Thatch would still be very much alive if Ace had had any sense about him in the first place.

Ace had been such a fool and it had cost him his life, had cost the entire world so much and had brought a close to the relative peace they had been living in. One young man’s ruthless arrogance had changed it all.

And Marco hated the memory of him for it.

He had lost his father, his best friend, his lover, and his home thanks to Ace. He was left standing through sheer force of his devil fruit, broken and beaten to his knees under the pressure of the despair and hatred he was strangled with, and he had no one to thank for it other than Ace.

A furious sound left Marco as he sank further down into the abyss of anger, clawing at his own chest to gain some form of purchase over himself, to feel, to _feel_ something real alongside the roiling mess of fury inside.

And yes, actually, now that he thought about it, Ace deserved exactly what he had got. It was his own stupid fucking fault that he had allowed himself to react to Akainu’s insults towards Pops. Ace could have ignored him, could have simply got the hell away like he was meant to and never had had to have sacrificed himself for Luffy. Akainu wouldn’t have caught up to them if he hadn’t slowed to a goddamn _stop_ in the middle of the battlefield.

The idiot.

The indescribably huge _idiot_.

Marco had blamed himself for it, constantly reliving the scene over and over and _over_ until his nose burned with the smell of Ace’s blood, until he couldn’t scrub away the feel of the stone floor beneath him as he had watched, as he had allowed himself to panic. He had argued with himself that he should have cut off his own hand to free himself from the cuff and get to Ace to save him - he could regrow anything he lost, after all - but no, _no_ , if Ace had just never put himself in that situation in the first place—

“Fuck you,” he hissed through clenched teeth, the sound filling the silent room around him, “you deserved it.”

And he broke.

Tears sprung up, hot and sharp, at the sound of his own voice saying something so hideous about the person he had loved so dearly. The anger inside writhed, telling him to not listen, to continue, that he would feel better once he fully gave himself over to the pull of blaming Ace so entirely—

But the spell was broken and so was he, sinking to his knees on the floor of the mess hall, his chest too constricted with grief and with rage to do much more than gasp and gurgle piteously where he sat.

Marco felt like he was dying, unable to breathe as tears ran down his cheeks.

It wasn’t true, it _wasn’t_ , he loved Ace, _loved him_ , loved his passion and his wild carefree approach to life, the way he had shone as bright as the sun into the darkest recesses of the world.

 _But it was his own fault_ —

Maybe so, maybe it was for some things, but not everything, never everything, and Marco missed him, wanted him in that moment, ached to feel his weight against him and hear his voice and smell his own unique blend of ash and _him_.

He choked, his mouth dry, the sob unable to leave him, and he felt like he was being torn apart from the inside-out.

If this was how he was to feel for the rest of his days, then he didn’t want it.

The constant and violent swinging between blaming and hating Ace to missing him so much that he was left in physical pain was overwhelming.

Marco didn’t know what to do anymore.

All he knew was that he didn’t want _this_.


End file.
